This article highlights the achievements of South Korean writer Han Kang, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the global impact of her works. Han Kang's writing centers on "narratives of violence," focusing on the traumatic memories inflicted on individuals by state machinery and wartime violence, as well as the suppression of women's sensory experiences under Confucian traditions and patriarchal systems. Her works not only explore overt violence in extreme scenarios but also delve into the institutionalized and normalized covert violence in everyday life. Through analyses of vegetarianism, the "plantification" of female protagonists, domestic gender violence, urban outcasts' longing for nature, and the conflict between linguistic civilization and bodily senses, the article seeks to uncover the core of Han Kang's literary world.

Resisting Gender Violence: Vegetarianism and Plantification

Han Kang's novel The Vegetarian explores the issue of gender violence against East Asian women within families through the protagonist Yeong-hye's vegetarianism and her impulse toward "plantification." The novel presents Yeong-hye's resistance to patriarchal gender constraints across three stories—from her vegetarian rebellion to her desire for physical plantification, culminating in the abandonment of her body to become a tree. Scholars have employed Foucault's theory of the body to interpret plantification as a challenge to gender power imbalances in Korean society. Yeong-hye's vegetarianism stems from her fear of bloody nightmares and her awakening to her husband's indifference. Carol J. Adams' concept of the "absent referent" explains the psychological motivation behind vegetarianism—the dissociation from the violence of slaughtering animals and empathy for living creatures. Yeong-hye's plight reflects her passive role as an "absent referent," her subjectivity instrumentalized, stripped of emotional and ethical resonance. Han Kang also sheds light on the hidden violence in kitchens—a traditionally female space—pointing out the psychological burdens some women endure while cooking. Yeong-hye's refusal to cook or consume meat is not only an act of empathy toward animals but also a rejection of complicity in violence. Her plantified resistance embodies a nonviolent, introspective approach, reflecting a yearning for a soft, inclusive, and harmless natural utopia. Ecofeminism posits that women and nature form a shared destiny due to oppression, advocating for the integration of ecological and feminist movements to resist such oppression. Han Kang's novels depict women's innate affinity for nature, their longing for a healing, plant-like existence, and their gentle yet resolute stance against everyday violence.

From "Urban Civilizational Illness" to the Natural Homeland

Han Kang's works profoundly expose the everyday violence of modern urban life, portraying protagonists' rejection of the city and their spiritual exhaustion as manifestations of modernity's suppression of individual lives. In works like The Vegetarian and The White Book, protagonists experience the homogenization of urban life, industrial pollution, and the erosion of dignity, leading to fatigue, disillusionment, and even flight from the city. Han Kang explores the dialectical relationship between pathological urban living and violence—such as the labor alienation and violent outbursts of a deliveryman in One Day or the indifferent gazes endured by the woman in The Silent Patient, both reflecting the exploitation of marginalized laborers in modern cities. Simultaneously, Han Kang addresses ecological crises and life-and-death struggles in industrialized small towns, as seen in The Black Deer, where the rise and fall of mining and the tragedies of miners' lives reveal humanity's reckless resource extraction and its ecological consequences. To heal "urban civilizational illness," Han Kang constructs rural cottages as therapeutic homelands in her works—spaces that serve as both natural dwellings and sanctuaries for the soul. These rural retreats become the healing spaces protagonists yearn for during spiritual confusion or physical trauma. Through the contrast between natural villages and the constraints of modern urban civilization, Han Kang calls for a harmonious, green coexistence between humans and nature. Her works reflect on the dual nature of civilizational progress while steadfastly upholding a humanistic foundation, imbuing pastoral poetry with a forward-looking dimension.

Linguistic Violence and the Awakening of Bodily Perception

Han Kang's works delve deeply into the implicit violence within language, portraying characters such as "the mute" and "the speech-averse," who harbor skepticism and aversion toward language. In The Black Deer and The Silent Patient, protagonists experience the pain and pressure inflicted by language, perceiving a disconnect between words and lived reality—language fails to convey genuine life sensations. The mute and the speech-averse seek authentic communication between souls, despising ornamental language or expressions that miss the mark. Through these characters, Han Kang reveals her profound longing for sincere soul-to-soul communication, demanding a high degree of unity between language and the heart.

In Western philosophy, the 20th-century "linguistic turn" exposed the fissure between language and the self. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that language "murders" the subject, highlighting the tension between language and selfhood. Han Kang's mute and speech-averse characters confront the paradox of being unable to reach their true selves or inner voices through language, plunging them into agonizing silence.

Han Kang offers an alternative pathway to connect with the world in her works: while the mute lose language, they awaken their bodily perceptions. In The Vegetarian, the female protagonist, after transforming into a plant, loses her senses yet feels heightened sensitivity. In The Silent Patient, the woman chooses not to speak even before losing her voice, using her eyes instead. Han Kang affirms the body as a more direct and sincere channel of perception, believing it is closer to the soul than language and that bodily intuition is truer than the translations of linguistic culture.

In Han Kang's novels, characters who favor bodily perception over language are often women, yearning for a form of soulful communication that bypasses language in favor of sensory connection. The body becomes a more ideal and authentic medium of expression. This resonates with French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous' concept of "écriture féminine" (women's writing), which advocates for women to write through the body, breaking down barriers, hierarchies, rhetoric, order, and rules. Han Kang uses mute female characters to expose the violence embedded in language while constructing a friendly conduit between humans and the world through the body.

Through protagonists trapped by language, Han Kang explores the latent violence and constraints within linguistic civilization. Language, while a tool for communication, also creates limitations and barriers. The abstract concepts embedded in speech obscure bodily sensations and construct cultural hierarchies, suppressing the expression of genuine life experiences. The mute instinctively perceive the oppressive nature of language, as muteness—akin to plantification—serves as a response to external violence.

Throughout her creative journey, Han Kang has engaged in profound reflections on gender violence nurtured within families, modern violence bred in cities, and the linguistic violence embedded in human civilization. She yearns for a natural, primal, and pure world while maintaining a vigilant awareness of the constructed forces of civilization and culture. The various forms of violence in the world do not exist in isolation but intertwine, revealing the omnipresence of power's terror. Han Kang's brilliance lies not only in her acute sensitivity to the fragility of individual lives under violent trauma but also in her ability to rediscover human dignity and strength through narratives of everyday violence. In moments where humanity reveals resilience and kindness, or when humans instinctively confront violence, she asks, "Why is the world still so beautiful?" With her delicate yet robust prose, she constructs a literary world that is fragile yet solid, violent yet pure, cold yet tender. Her relentless interrogation of human complexity creates an unparalleled tension in her works.